Tuesday, February 7, 2012

The Sirens of Titan - Book review

Do you read a Vonnegut book, or does the book read you? Does it expose your thoughts to the most detailed analysis of humanity, human behavior, and human mind and then tells you to not give a damn? Except that it also seizes the phrase 'to not give a damn' from your control. Leaves you hanging midair. Questioning.

So what to do? What is to be done? Apart from whatever has already been done?

You go beyond the story. See Unk staring at you pointedly with a hazy gaze. Figure out if he thinks whether you are in control of the story or is he the real commander. Go beyond the cliché, beyond the at-times stupendously obvious humour. Look at the blanketed irony. Then either sleep in the warmth of ignorance or throw away the cover and dive deep in the chills of reality.

Reading Vonnegut is probably a religion. The Church of God the Exquisitely Sarcastic.

Shake hands with Rumfoord. If he allows you to do so.

Peer through the kaleidoscope of allusions. The allusions in the form of the War, Harmoniums, Old Salo. A machine with a heart, as opposed to humans with emotions hardened as Titanic peat due to over exposure to something unrecognized or overtly familiar. Kazak, the dog on the leash. The soulless slave of gravity.

In between become "unstuck in time" while reading the events that led to the initiation of the formation of "The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent". Keep reading and re-reading several passages.

I have a feeling that I am lost. Lost while comprehending the gravitational depth for each line Vonnegut has written. I don't know whether I really liked this book or I really want to like it more than I did. I wonder what planet influenced me to write this review. The Hindu religion does give a lot of importance to planets and their influences on your life and the reviews you write.

I will abstain from asking myself these questions after a Vonnegut book in future. Best is to try and emulate the sweet sounds of Poo-tee-weet.